Introduction

"Mal nommer un objet c'est ajouter au malheur de ce monde" (translation) "To name things wrongly is to add to the misfortune of the world"

The statement made famous by Albert Camus, who borrowed it from the philosopher Brice Parain1, allows me to point out one of the major problems addressed in this book. However, it is a question of taking a step further. It is not only the naming, the choices, and the uses of words that are at stake, but their ordering, the order of the discourse. If it is true that naming or defining can add to the misery of the world when it is not attentive and adjusted, it is even more true for the order of discourse. Moreover, it is not only about concrete objects. Indeed, for a good number of discourses, those that deal, for example, with future politics, or those whose objects are abstract - partially or totally, like justice or responsibility - different definitions, interpretations and ordering of discourses to name them, express them, share them and discuss them are possible. To put it succinctly, even though we have forgotten it, rhetoric, in its noblest and most demanding sense, has made it possible to elaborate and order the discourse. Its fate is linked to the vitality of politics and democracy.

Certainly, our time is more about small sentences and information flows, rather than constructed discourses. Tweeting (in French chatting, chirping, even blabbing) is not the same as arguing.

The order of the discourse can be as shimmering as music. Narration, interpretation, and argumentation, for example, organize discourse and communication in different ways. They help us to coordinate to converse, to express disagreements and uncertainties to deliberate, or investigate with attention, both to the partners in the discussion and to all the dimensions of the examination that need to be accounted for in the case of consideration. Conversations are most often bouncy and disjointed, moving quickly from one topic to another. However, they can be much more extended and focused on a subject. They can be more sustained, both for thematic coherence and for the attention given by each partner. Deliberations, when they have gone beyond respectful communicative exchanges, must be very structured, as it is a matter of deciding when disagreements and uncertainties exist. As for consideration, through its conceptual richness, we will see that it brings together levels, domains, and aspects of communication and reflection, both individual and collective, in an even richer way. Moreover, it is astonishing that until now it has not found its rightful place, notably in political life. This written work is a first step in this direction. It is more promising and complete than deliberation. It is one of the flip sides of consideration, resentment, which threatens collective life in our complex and pluralistic societies.

Thanks to Parain and Camus, we could therefore establish a link between them: the naming of objects, and, for us, the order of discourse and the misfortune or happiness of our common world. If we add to this the worlds to come, absent by definition and often abstract, which compose and decompose a good part of political life, the order of discourse is an even more essential issue. From this point of view, the reductive injunctions to "the concrete", "real life" and "real people" would be deserving of oppositions and questionings. Indeed, a great part of what we rely on to change the world, our relationships with it and with humanity, concerns what has not yet happened and abstract concepts, supposed to guide us and, if it is necessary, pull us away from the present mediocrity. Freedom, responsibility, justice and even democracy are examples. I will add that the concept of the so-called "real people" who would live a "real life" is as problematic as it is insulting for others that these unjustified pretensions induce. Certainly, the living conditions and contexts of some are not those of others. The richness of communicative capacities allows us to precisely put these contexts into discussion so that the shared contexts of life can be woven together, even though it is not in an intersubjective way, by the means of institutions and systems.

The entire quotation from Camus indicates another side of the problem of responsible communication as a condition of responsible deliberation, as it is envisaged in this work: "Parain's profound idea is an idea of honesty: the criticism of language cannot evade the fact that our words commit us and that we must be faithful to them" (author's translation).

This book is not a treatise on how to communicate well and adopt good practices when it comes to communication, which would have been entitled: "How to communicate while being efficient and ethical". It is not just about ethical compliance or a code of ethics for communicators. It goes beyond the question of the commitment of our word, along a Paraino-Camusian line, which, while useful, can be insufficient when it is rightly challenged. This is often the case when we must face the conflict between opposite commitments. Political life is paved with them.

Conversation, deliberation, consideration and communicational capacities for "responding to"

This book is first and foremost concerned with the capacity to "respond to" another way of talking about responsibility, but for all sorts of actions and not simply the commitment of our word. Now, this capacity to "respond to" can take on different frameworks. It can be a conversation. This is the term used, for example, by the moral philosopher McKenna (2012), who links responsibility and conversation. He acknowledges that Watson (1987) inspired this connection between responsibility and conversation.

However, "responding to" can find its place in a deliberation, whether it is individual, silent or exposed to the risk of collective deliberation. It should be noted that theories of deliberative democracy pay little attention to the tension between individual and collective deliberation (Reber 2011e). As for the responsibilities involved, which can be imputed into the different participants in a deliberation, to my knowledge, they have never been discussed.

This is also the case for the responsibilities of the institutions of our complex, networked and constrained democracies, which must be considered in any deliberation.

The deliberating parties are affected by different responsibilities. Deliberation is thus at work in the minds of participants in a reflection and in their exchanges, within the micro-institutions that structure them, and as a macro- and inter-institutional deliberative system. Depending on the time it is given and its form, it can be more or less effective for "responding to".

Finally, responsibility could find a place within another framework, that of consideration. I will therefore propose a new theory of democracy, alongside the already famous one of deliberation, that of the considerative democracy to use an old term, or giving consideration, or simply of the democracy of consideration. The democracy of consideration is oriented by the consideration of the persons conversing or deliberating, as well as the examination "all things considered" of common but different systems of responsibilities. Conversation deepens, consideration allows for both deepening, through attention to a dimension for further consideration or to a person, and broadening.

In each of its three frameworks, responsibility understood as "responding to" can rely on different communicative capacities. It can take the form of a narrative, interpretation or argument, but these communicative capacities are not exhaustive. Each one has its advantages and limitations. We will often have to improvise, because human life is not a theater where the replies are written. However, these improvisations, as in music, require the integration of a minimum of certain codes2. I would like to add that we will have to deal with more or less good improvisations. In the same way, we will often have to implement a translation. The use of analogies is also very frequent in exchanges to understand, be understood, and compare situations and solutions (Hofstadter and Sander 2013).

However, in the rules of public debate, it is often only the appeal to the arguments that is required. But this choice is arbitrary. Why close the door to other communicative capacities (Reber 2007)? Moreover, argumentation is underdetermined when it is not made explicit at all. I will therefore question argumentation, in the sense that I will pose and attempt to respond to unthinking questions about this communicative and rhetorical resource that is much more required than presented. Moreover, it sometimes offers several response options. This is not only the problem of those who propose public deliberation, of practitioners, but also of most deliberation theorists, and even, as we will see in detail, of one of the most authoritative references on deliberation: Jürgen Habermas (Reber 2011b, 2020b). He demands argumentation, but the developments he gives us are insufficient and problematic, even though his work does not wait for their implementation in real experiments.

However, the most important thing is that by demanding argumentation, we go much too fast. The types of questions asked and the possible responses are...